Could this state derail the Clinton train?

Published 10:00 pm, Tuesday, October 16, 2007

The presidential campaign nicknamed "Hillaryland" rolls into Seattle on Monday, its relentlessness, efficiency and play execution bearing comparison to Ohio State on the gridiron.

"This machine is awesome, there's no other word for it," Carl Bernstein, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Watergate journalist and author of the Hillary Clinton biography "A Woman in Charge," said on a visit here Tuesday.

"You see a precision to the way her proposals are presented and rolled out," Bernstein added. "Not a stray word is uttered. Not an extraneous thought is permitted."

And, Bernstein said, as other Democratic candidates are learning, there is an iron rule about the iron-willed lady: Never bet against Hillary Clinton in an endurance contest.

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Washington is a state to test the power of Hillaryland, every bit as much as wheels used to come off the USC football machine on fall Saturdays in a drenched, windblown Husky Stadium.

Our state takes a liking to new faces: Bill Clinton was beaten in its 1992 caucuses by ex- Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas. Our caucus goers can change their minds on a dime. In 2004, Washington's two leading "Deaniacs" -- Rep. Jim McDermott and state Democratic Chairman Paul Berendt -- lost their home precincts to John Kerry supporters.

And this campaign's fresh presence, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, has outraised Clinton here and drawn crowds of a size comparable to the closing weekend of the New Hampshire primary.

Joel Connelly has been a staff columnist for more than 30 years. He comments regularly on politics and public policy.

In Bernstein's view, Obama is the chief obstacle to the Clinton campaign's projection of inevitability.

"Bush is their greatest asset," he said, "because it makes Bill Clinton's administration look so much better. But Obama really threw a monkey wrench into things. Just his presence as the first credible black candidate for president is startling. The job of the Clinton campaign is to prevent her, and him, and their ideas from looking shopworn. It is a challenge."

The most-asked question of the 2008 campaign has been whether Clinton brings too much "baggage" to the race, with too many people holding hostile views of the former first lady.

"There is also hard-core love ... (Clinton's support) is significantly harder than anyone else's support," Mark Penn, the senator's chief strategist, said in Seattle last week.

Bernstein's view is shaped by his study of Clinton's life. "A Woman in Charge" depicts a fiercely disciplined person, keyed to a Methodist religious faith and a belief in family that led her into the crisis management of her own husband's infidelities.

"She is, according to friends, more at ease, contented and self-confident than at any point in her adult life since she went to Arkansas in the mid-1970s," Bernstein added.

During August's yearly Kos convention of liberal bloggers, at which Clinton appeared, a sizable number of participants wore buttons bearing the slogan "Clinton Dynasty" with a negative slash through it.

In Bernstein's view, "It is about a restoration, another co-presidency. If I might paraphrase James Carville's slogan, it's the marriage, stupid."

The former president is picking up a handsome honorarium in Vancouver next month, and then coming to Seattle to extol the city's initiatives to counter global warming. The one-two punch doesn't surprise Bernstein.

"It's still a love affair," he said. "They're joined at the hip. He is as important to her as ever. ... And he is on a mission, to get Hillary Clinton elected and get them back into the White House.

Both Clintons have been frequent visitors. The Northwest experienced 13 "Elvis Sightings" during Bill Clinton's presidency. Hillary Clinton has raised money for Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., usually filling a Westin or a convention center with a crowd of more than 1,000 -- a majority of them women.

In Bernstein's book, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin concludes that there is a seesaw effect in the Clintons' relationship. When one of them is up, the other is down.

Northwest visits have reflected that. An angry crowd of conservative radio listeners greeted Hillary Clinton in 1994 when she used Seattle as launching pad for a "Health Care Caravan" touting her ill-fated health plan. Democrats lost control of Congress in the wake of the plan's failure.

Four years later, amid House Republicans' impeachment drive, the first lady came to Seattle at the height of her popularity. She raised money in Democrat Jay Inslee's successful bid to unseat two-term Republican Rep. Rick White, an impeachment supporter. Inslee is co-chairman of her 2008 presidential bid in the state, and co-chairman of the campaign's energy task force.

In addition to her appearance at state Democrats' Maggie awards, Sen. Clinton will appear at a $2,300-a- person dinner hosted by Seattle shipping executive Stan Barer and his wife, Alta.

Bernstein is speaking about the candidate at 5 p.m. Wednesday at The Elliott Bay Book Co.

Asked if Clinton has overcome problems that made her a spark for controversy, the author turned to a passage from his book:

"In her artfully crafted public utterances and written sentences there has almost always been an effort at baseline truthfulness. Yet, almost always something holds her back from telling the whole story, as if she doesn't trust the reader, listener, friend, interviewer, constituent -- or perhaps herself -- to understand the true significance of events."

Columnist Joel Connelly has written about politics for the P-I since 1973.